Does anyone have an opinion of how the DT Hugi hubs compare to Chris Kings? Engagement and durability?

ENGAGEMENT:
Chris King's engagement ring design is far and away the most precise and robust compared to the typical pawl or DT's star ratchet. That's where the distinctive "Killer Bee" sound comes from. The question then becomes, is that a major discriminator or icing on the cake?

For off-road applications where the hub ends up under massive loads from VERY short gears, the Chris King design is just about optimum. However, even for off-road and most road applications the more typical hub designs that use pawl & ratchet engagement systems work just fine too.

DURABILTY:
So long as you do the periodic maintenance (clean & lube), the DT's should have a similar service life to a Chris King. A clean and lubricated DT hub is a happy hub. One that is neglected will eventually begin to skip and then fail.

By the way, the Chris King hubs also need some periodic maintenance, the first and most critical being a check of the bearing pre-load after about the first 100 miles or so. Beyond that, the engagement rings should be cleaned and treated with CK's Honey Butter or what ever they call it these days on at least an annual basis, and more often for demanding conditions, e.g., wet use and most certainly off-road.

Spot on.

I would add that King hubs use a mechanical helix to promote engagement. where as the DT is entirely spring based with a slight wedging on account of the drive ring tooth angle.

Compared to spring and pawl type ratchet hubs, the two you mention have in my opinion more drive engagement contact surface.

FWIW, we roll on DT's front and rear on all our tandems. I'm sure kings would be fine also.

As TG mentioned both require some routine cleaning and relubrication to work without flaw.

Either way I doubt you would be disappointed except that you might not have money for coffe whan you pay for the hubs.

PK

If you have 145 mm rear dropout spacing and you want DT hubs check Co-Motion's site for their wheels. Last year, I found their wheels less expensive than having the LBS build a wheel.

Can't comment on durability, but the DTs are way easy to service. Just did mine for the first time. No special tools needed. The most difficult part is just getting the end cap popped off. I think the star ratchets are relatively inexpensive to replace if they start to wear. You do need to be careful to put only a light coating of the special DT grease on the ratchets otherwise they might not engage.

For what its worth, I'm grateful not to have 'angry bee' noise. Not sure what the attraction is.

If you want it easier, here's a link to what I did for one of the races we entered. I shared this with a friend that does long distance touring. He mentioned it would be good for that type riding also. No tools required to get into the hubs drive mech.

https://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=656485

Don't take this as the Kings are bad, they aren't, we just run DT's and have for a long time.

PK

I've never had any issues with DT's. I use DT240's almost exclusively these days. (though, I had to build a custom axle to make a 145 spacing)

DT does have a 36t engagement prawn available now that really, in my opinion fixes the engagement points.